The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a secure facility built into a mountain on the island of Spitsbergen, in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, close to the town of Longyearbyen. It was opened in February 2008 and stores duplicate samples of seeds from gene banks around the world, as insurance against the loss of crop varieties through war, disaster, disease or mismanagement. The seeds are kept at about minus eighteen degrees Celsius in the permafrost, and the remote location and the cold make it safe even if the cooling system fails. It is owned by Norway and run by the Norwegian government, the Crop Trust and the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre. Its first withdrawal took place in 2015, when researchers replaced seeds lost in Syria's civil war.
Before and after
- from 20 January 2008 to 29 September 2013Premiere of Breaking Bad
- 27 January 2008Death of Suharto
- 7 February 2008Launch of STS-122
- 17 February 20082008 Kosovo declaration of independence
- 26 February 2008Construction of Svalbard Global Seed Vault
- 27 February 2008Creation of Windows Server 2008
- March 2008Construction of Beijing National Stadium
- 1 April 2008Discovery of WASP-12b
- 10 April 2008Launch of GitHub
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The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 21st century.